Now Super 30 like IIT coaching for poor Muslims

By Imran Khan Patna June 11 (IANS) Bihar’s Additional Director General of Police Abhyanand, who coached and helped 30 students from poor families to join the Indian Institutes of Technology, now plans to coach talented poor Muslim IIT aspirants. A few days after Abhyanand dissociated himself from the Super 30, the innovative coaching institute in Patna, he made up his mind to start another experiment to spot talented Muslim students from poor families and to help them crack the IIT entrance examination.

“Now my focus is to help students from the Muslim community, who are educationally and economically most backward in the country,” said Abhayanand.

Abhyanand told IANS by telephone Wednesday that he had already started working on the new project and is discussing it with interested people from the Muslim community and others who will come forward to shape it.

“I am confident that it will materialize within a month’s time. We are preparing the methodology,” he said.

He said that talented poor Muslim students would be given proper guidance, study materials as well other facilities free of cost.

“It will be on the lines of Super 30, which was a successful experiment with hundred percent result this year,” said Abhyanand. He was co-founder of Super 30 along with Anand Kumar.

He is likely to get support from some Muslim organisations to launch his new project. Rahmaniya Foundation, a voluntary organisation based in Munger district, has promised to help him.

Abhyanand, who taught physics at the Super 30 since its inception six years ago, said that the success of Super 30 lies in hard work and proper guidance for achieving excellent results.

Every year, Super 30 selects a group of 30 IIT aspirants from poor families and provides them free coaching, food and accommodation. This year all the 30 students enrolled in Super 30 were selected for the IITs.

Abhyanand said Super 30 was a concept. “It proved to be a successful experiment, now I am set for another experiment for poor Muslim students,” he said. There is a lot of talent which is yet to be found and nurtured, he added.

He said the idea of coaching Muslim students struck him because for the first time Super 30’s successful students included Muslim students this year. Till last year students from backward castes, extreme backward castes and Dalits cracked IIT-JEE through Super 30. “But this year, some students from the minority community also succeeded in IIT-JEE,” he said.

According to the 1991 census, the Muslim population in Bihar was over 10 million, which is 15.7 percent of the state’s population.

Despite several schemes for minorities, only 36 percent of the Muslims in Bihar are literate. There are half a dozen minority colleges and dozens of schools. There are over 4,000 madrasas in the state.

Super 30 took shape five years ago. Eighteen of its students cracked the IIT-JEE that first year, 2003. The number rose to 22 in 2004 and 26 in 2005.

Last year, a British filmmaker traced the journey of 30 students from impoverished homes to IIT. Directed by Christopher Mitchell, “Super 30″ follows the lives of the 30 students from the time they were chosen from among 4,000-5,000.

Two years ago Norika Fujiwara, a former Japanese beauty queen and actress, made a documentary film on Super 30 for its innovative and successful attempt to send poor children to India’s top engineering colleges.